Persistent shifts in equilibria are likely to arise in oligopolistic markets and may be detrimental to the measurement of conduct, related markups and intensity of competition. We develop a cointegrated VAR (vector autoregression) based approach to detect long-run changes in conduct when data is...

This paper studies strategies pursued by banks in order to differentiate their services from those of their rivals. In that way competition among banks is softened. More specifically we analyze if the bank size, the bank's ability to avoid losses, and its capital ratio can be used as strategic...

This paper studies strategies pursued by banks in order to differentiate their services and soften competition. More specifically we analyze whether bank's ability to avoid losses, its capital ratio, or bank size can be used as strategic variables to make banks different and increase the...

We present an empirical model of firms' strategic behavior in the presence of switching costs. Consumers' transition probabilities embedded in firms strategic interaction are used in a two-stage game to derive structural estimable equations of a first order condition, market-share (demand), and...

This paper shows that borrowers' ethical behavior leads lending banks to loosen financing conditions when setting loan rates. We advance the banking literature by stressing that the previous financing loosening is enhanced when there is similarity of lenders and borrowers along their ethical...

This paper attempts to validate the double jeopardy loyalty effect in a utility framework using a discrete choice approach instead of the Dirichlet model. We specify brand choice and allow for differences in brand loyalty measures across brands in two different product categories. The discrete...

In the automobile sector, it is a usual practice that independent carmakers engage in the development and production of a common car model, the so-called twin-cars. From the point of view of the marketing literature, we claim that carmakers should not charge different brand premia on separate...